This invention relates generally to telecommunications systems, and more particularly to a common management information base (MIB) for a network element in a telecommunications system.
Telecommunications systems include customer premise equipment (CPE), local loops connecting each customer premise to a central office (CO) or other node, nodes providing switching and signaling for the system, and internode trunks connecting the various nodes. The customer premise equipment (CPE) includes telephones, modems for communicating data over phone lines, computer and other devices that can directly communicate video, audio, and other data over a datalink. The network nodes include tradition circuit-switch nodes, which have transmission pass dedicated to specific users for the duration of a call and employ continuous, fixed-bandwidth transmission as well as packet-switch nodes that allow dynamic bandwidth, dependent on the application. The transmission media between the nodes may be wireline, wireless, or a combination of these or other transmission medias.
In a telecommunication system, the nodes are managed by standardized management protocols such as Transaction Language One (TL-1), simple network management protocol (SNMP), Common Management Information Service Element (CMISE), and the like. Generally speaking, each of these management protocols includes a protocol agent and object model. The agent is responsible for parsing the external management commands and maintaining communication sessions with external management stations or users. The object model is a management information base (MIB). The MIB is a data structure built for a specific management protocol to exchange the management information between a node and external management stations.
Multiple protocol nodes that handle disparate types of traffic are typically required to support multiple management protocols such as TL-1, SNMP, and/or CMISE. Provision of multiple databases to support the different protocols requires large amounts of resources to implement the databases and maintain data integrity across the databases. One attempt to use a single database for multiple protocols configured the database in accordance with one protocol and used a protocol adapter for a second protocol. The protocol adapter translates protocol messages from the second protocol to the first protocol and responses back to the second protocol. Due to the incompatibility between management protocols, however, the adapter is a complex component that is expensive to implement. In addition, the adapter is inefficient due to the protocol translations, which slow down response time. Other attempts to support multiple management protocols with a single database provided only limited functionality for one of the protocols while creating special commands for the other. This solution is expensive to implement and provides only a partial solution.
The present invention provides a common management information base (MIB) that substantially eliminates or reduces problems associated with previous methods and systems. In particular, the common MIB provides a layer of abstraction to isolate internal data representations from data representations made externally to a network element. This allows a network element to have a single, consistent internal representation of data, and at the same time, support multiple different external interfaces for management.
In accordance with one embodiment of the present invention, the common MIB or other data store includes a set of data structures, a set of entity classes, and an interface object. The data structures each store data for an entity type. The entity classes each include specific functionality for an entity type. The interface object includes base functionality for the entity types. An interface is operable to generate an entity interface by loading the interface object with an entity class for an entity type and to access the data structure for the entity type using the entity interface.
More specifically, in accordance with a particular embodiment of the present invention, the data structures are stored in non-volatile memory, such as relational database tables. In this and other embodiments, the interface accesses the data structures by executing the entity interface. The entity interface is initially populated, executed, and responded to by executing function calls within the entity interface.
Technical advantages of the present invention include providing a protocol independent MIB for managing multi-protocol network elements within a telecommunications network. In particular, the common MIB provides a layer of abstraction to isolate data representations internal to the network element from data representations made externally to the network element. Moreover, the modular design of the common MIB allows for time and cost efficient testing, integration and packaging of the system.
Another technical advantage of the present invention includes providing an improved data store for storing data representations of a network element. In particular, the MIB includes a collection of managed entities (MEs) that includes a class definition and data attributes stored in non-volatile memory. The class definitions are instantiated to generate an interface for communicating with the data attributes in the non-volatile memory. In this way, a separate instance need not be continuously maintained for each ME. Therefore use of resources is optimized.